Feminist Reads

Books dedicated to feminist history and ideals.
Updated September 30, 2022
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The feminine mystique
Friedan, Betty.
Landmark, groundbreaking, classic--these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name," that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women...
Feminism unfinished a short surprising history of American women's movements
Cobble, Dorothy Sue
Eschewing the conventional wisdom that places the origins of the American women's movement in the nostalgic glow of the late 1960s, Feminism Unfinished traces the beginnings of this seminal American social movement to the 1920s, in the process creating an expanded, historical narrative that...
Good and mad : the revolutionary power of women's anger
Traister, Rebecca
***NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*** ***BEST BOOKS OF 2018 SELECTION BY*** * WASHINGTON POST * People * NPR * ESQUIRE * ELLE * WIRED * REFINERY 29 * "In a year when issues of gender and sexuality dominated...
Hood feminism notes from the women that a movement forgot
Kendall, Mikki
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "The fights against hunger, homelessness, poverty, health disparities, poor schools, homophobia, transphobia, and domestic violence are feminist fights. Kendall offers a feminism rooted in the livelihood of everyday women." --Ibram X. Kendi,...
Men explain things to me
Solnit, Rebecca
The National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author delivers a collection of essays that serve as the perfect "antidote to mansplaining" (The Stranger).   In her comic, scathing essay "Men Explain Things to Me," Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in...
Second sex
Beauvoir, Simone de, 1908-1986.
Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, and brilliantly introduced by Judith Thurman, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterpiece weaves together history, philosophy, economics, biology, and a host of other disciplines to analyze the Western notion of “woman” and to...
Sex object a memoir
Valenti, Jessica
New York Times Bestseller NPR Best Book of 2016 "Sharp and prescient... The appeal of Valenti's memoir lies in her ability to trace objectification through her own life, and to trace what was for a long time her own obliviousness to it...Sex Object is an antidote to...
We should all be feminists
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, 1977-
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The highly acclaimed, provocative essay on feminism and sexual politics--from the award-winning author of Americanah "A call to action, for all people in the world, to undo the gender hierarchy." --Medium<...
Women race & class
Davis, Angela Y. 1944-
From one of our most important scholars and civil rights activist icon, a powerful study of the women's liberation movement and the tangled knot of oppression facing Black women. "Angela Davis is herself a woman of undeniable courage. She should be heard."-The New York...
Vindication of the rights of woman
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759-1797.
Writing in an age when the call for the rights of man had brought revolution to America and France, Mary Wollstonecraft produced her own declaration of female independence in 1792. Passionate and forthright, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman attacked the prevailing view of docile, decorative...
Sister outsider essays and speeches
Lorde, Audre.
Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. "[Lorde's] works will be important to those truly interested in growing up sensitive,...
Ain't I a woman Black women and feminism
hooks, bell
A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain't I a Woman has become a must-read for all those interested in the nature of black womanhood. Examining the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism among feminists, and the black woman's...
The madwoman in the attic : the woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination
Gilbert, Sandra M.
'Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar offer a bold new interpretation of the great 19th century women novelists, and in doing so they present the first persuasive case for the existence of a distinctly female imagination. Like gnostic heretics who claim to have found the secret code that unlocks the...
Sacred hoop recovering the feminine in American Indian traditions
Allen, Paula Gunn.
This pioneering work, first published in 1986, documents the continuing vitality of American Indian traditions and the crucial role of women in those traditions.
Bad feminist essays
Gay, Roxane
"Roxane Gay is so great at weaving the intimate and personal with what is most bewildering and upsetting at this moment in culture. She is always looking, always thinking, always passionate, always careful, always right there."  -- Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be...
Room of one's own
Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941.
"I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman." In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister--a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, and equal in genius, but...
Black feminist thought : knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment
Hill Collins, Patricia.
In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought,Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African...

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